


Shinola

by fannishliss



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky and sharp things, M/M, Nomad, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Steve's Power to Rant, in response to the 2016 USA election
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-09
Updated: 2016-11-09
Packaged: 2018-08-30 01:29:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8513512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fannishliss/pseuds/fannishliss
Summary: Some people sell shit and dress it up as Shinola.  Steve never wanted to be that guy.  Maybe now, on the run with Bucky, without the Shield, he can finally take back his own voice.





	

**Author's Note:**

> If you are curious about my headcanon as to how Bucky got the triggers out of his head, read my long story, Longing. Here in this story, Steve and Bucky have smuggled themselves back into the USA, and the Accords are still in place.

Steve had tried to get Bucky to go to bed.  Watching the election results trickle in after midnight wouldn’t change the outcome, and Steve had committed to his sleep schedule, meager as it was, for his own mental health.  So when Bucky had been unable to stay in bed, Steve had tried to rest as well as he could while Bucky did whatever he was doing in the other room — hopefully not just hitting the refresh button on the election results every three minutes.  
  
Steve was called to wakefulness by a soft, repetitive _shing_.  
  
It wasn’t light out yet, but it was a reasonable hour to get up and make coffee. So Steve went into the other room to see what Bucky was doing — more importantly, to find out _how_ Bucky was doing.  
  
Bucky was at the table.  All the knives from the kitchen drawers were laid out neatly in order by length of blade.  Bucky had his honing stones and his honing oil and his strop.  Sure enough, there was Steve’s pearl-handled straight razor, and even his Swiss Army knife.  There was Bucky’s general utility blade and his boot knives and his sleeve knives — and that was the shiv from the hem of his jacket that Steve was maybe not supposed to know about. And shit, there was the hatchet.    
  
Bucky was quiet and stone faced and his cheeks were streaked with tears.  
  
“Didn’t go our way, huh?” Steve asked.  
  
Bucky shook his head minutely.  The steady _shing_ of one of his paring knives rang out into the room, like a prayer bell might ring through a zen-do, like the even breaths of meditating sitters.    
  
Steve’s heart had fallen the night before, farther than sometime in the ten days before, when the progressive campaign had lost its momentum.  In the old day, Steve would have been angry and gone out to pick a fight. Now, they were in the middle of the woods in a remote part of a northeastern state, in a two-room cabin Nat had secured for them under a labyrinth of false names, and taking care of Bucky was more important than making himself feel better.  
  
“I wish,” Bucky whispered.  
  
“Yeah?” Steve said.  Bucky had been very thoroughly conditioned not to have any wishes, but he had fought long and hard to be able to express his own opinions.  Steve treasured every single thought in Bucky’s head, from his enthusiastic appreciation of the fall foliage (Steve honestly thought that the long hikes they had taken together to appreciate peak color from every vantage point were some of the highlights of his life so far) to his opinion on adding pumpkin pie spices to coffee.    
  
“I wish you still had the shield,” he said.    
  
Steve shook his head.  “I can’t be that right now.”  
  
“I guess not.  Now especially.” Bucky sighed.  “But.  I wish you could be.  So that.  Some of us could still look at you. And hope.”     
  
Steve’s heart ached.  “It’s a sad world out there right now, Bucky.  People are hurting, acting out against their own best interests.”  
  
“I remember those movies you used to be in,” Bucky said, smirking faintly. “You could just point at them and tell them what to think.”  
  
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I fucking hated those movies,” Steve said.  “And back then I wasn’t even selling Shinola.”  
  
Bucky was quiet for a minute, then gestured vaguely over the array of edged tools laid out on the table while he was still working on one of the knives.  “Coup’s not an option.”  
  
“No,” Steve agreed.  The United States was predicated on the peaceful transfer of power, and they had no intention, and even less right, to think of any such thing.  Not to mention that they were both still on the international watch list, besides which Steve had dropped the Shield, and Bucky had sworn not to pick up a gun ever again before Steve even found him in Bucharest.  
  
“I downloaded that speech you made at the Triskelion,” he said.    
  
Steve huffed.  His ability to inspire people with his off the cuff rants embarrassed him a little. It had never worked when he was skinny, or maybe once or twice (Erskine and Peggy came to mind).  
  
“You could do some good.  Maybe.  Get a message out there.”  
  
“The podcast is mightier than the Shield?” Steve laughed.  
  
“Fuck if I know.”  
  
_Shing.  Shing.  Shing_.  Bucky honed all the edges, and Steve breathed in and out and thought about having a voice.  Maybe a voice for good.  
  
“I’m a private citizen again, you know, even if we are outlaws.  Free speech is a constitutional right.”    
  
“Yup,” Bucky agreed.  He finally looked up from the knives.  His even, flat expression was still so strange to Steve, and his eyes were so much older.  But Steve thought he knew that look. It was the look that was sizing Steve up when he was working up to a fight.  
  
“Natalia can set you up,” Bucky said.  “Untraceable.”  
  
“I know," Steve said.  Weekly podcasts.  Steve could say a few things maybe.  And not as a propagandist, but as Steve Rogers — just a guy who really cared about his country and his world.    
  
“It’s a good idea,” Steve said.  “Thanks, Buck.”  
  
“Better than just sharpening everything I can lay hands on?” Bucky asked, grinning a little.  
  
That smirk was better than the sunrise to Steve.  He’d take as much of it as he could get. “Almost as good,” Steve allowed, and  started boiling coffee and frying up bacon with double the day’s ration of eggs and plenty of toast.    
  
Steve had always had a lot to say.  Maybe now, a nomad living in shadows, he could finally open his mouth, and speak. 


End file.
